What are some causes of overheating...

[Brett Garret]

What causes cars to run hot. You hear that the 3.4 and 3.8s are prone to overheating. Besides the obvious cause of cooling/coolant problems. What are some other causes. I have well tuned my car, flushed the coolant twice a year, run Royal Purple oil, and don't run it too hard and it runs very warm even with a 160* thermo. One odd thing to note is that it does not run very warm at all when the A/C is on . I was just thinking of it and wanted to know. Thanks.

[BLLDOGG]

well, what do you consider running hot? and the 160* thermo without a comp tuning for it doesnt matter. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[CamaroRob97]

When your A/C is on your fans will contantly run cooling the coolant therefor keeping your engine cooler.

When you sitting still in traffic a lower thermo ant really going to help unless you got your fans set to come on early.

[camaroincal]

Yup turn it to Max AC and it'll kick the fans on and keep the temps down a bit in traffic.

[Nbajwill55]

I've had 3 cars overheat on me in my lifetime and i'm only 18. As far as running the AC in traffic, i was always told to run the heat in traffic - it lets out more heat plus the fans are still moving. Also, GM's just seem to run warm, but i've heard problems of the front ground effects on both camaro's and birds keeping the air from getting in the engine, causing overheating. Also try a K&N filter, i know there's mixed reviews about them, but my car hasn't ran past 170* in the 2 months i've had it. good luck!

[pontiac nino]

Sometimes the outside portion of the radiator gets dirty and picks up debris, somethimes it's the inside when I swapped the motors I made sure to flush the entire system and cleaned the (coils) outside w/ a soft brush. My car don't get near the 200 mark unless its super hot outside and is in a long traffic light.
Hope that helps.

[y87inside]

Check to make sure both cooling fans are operating (if you have two).....make sure your hoses arent colapsing.....if there is a bleed screw somewhere you can make sure there isnt any air in your system.

Good luck!

[F1GT]

Low coolant and sitting idle in hot temps is the main reason when there are no mechanical problems. When I idle for more than 5 mins I usually turn the AC compressor on along with the heater on full hot. Therefor the fans kick in and I'm taking heat away from the coolant.

[bu-bye]

you say you have flushed the coolent, did you do this yourself?. If so how did you flush it? Just a thought, you might have an air bubble in you water pump. This will push little to no water through your engine causing it to get hot even though everything seems to run fine and your water levels are high.